Ricky Ray always had a cool, calm demeanour on the playing field, but he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to control his emotions when the Eskimos induct the former quarterback into their Wall of Honour.
The induction ceremony will be held at halftime of the Eskimos game against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats at 7:30 p.m. Friday at The Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium. He will also be honoured at the Eskimos Annual Dinner, presented by Postmedia Solutions, on Tuesday, Sept. 24, at the Edmonton Convention Centre.
“When I first got to Edmonton, that’s the first thing that stands out in my mind,” Ray said about the Wall of Honour. “You learn about the history and the tradition and the winning expectations that this franchise has built over time by the players, coaches and everybody who has worked in that organization.
“I experienced that from Day 1 – watching the highlight films, seeing some of the ex-players around when you go into the stadium, and you see some of those names on the Wall of Honour. You go to the annual dinner, and they’re honouring somebody. You really understand how important that is to the franchise.
“For me, to be able to be one of those guys and to be a small part of the history of such a great franchise, it’s something that’s very rewarding to me,” he continued. “I don’t know exactly how I’m going to feel until I go through that experience, but just to be one of those guys that I watched and experienced throughout my time playing there is pretty awesome.”
Ray, 39, who will be the 31st player named to the Wall of Honour, is the Eskimos’ all-time passing leader with 40,531 yards, 210 touchdown passes, 4,827 passes and 3,225 completions, plus an assortment of season and game records during nine years with the team from 2002-11, including highest pass-completion percentage in a single game of 92 per cent (completing 23 of 25 passes). He led the Eskimos to the Grey Cup in each of his first three seasons, losing in Edmonton in 2002, but winning the CFL championship games at Regina in ’03 and Vancouver in ’05, when he was named the Grey Cup MVP.
Not bad for a player who supposedly had “a weak arm.”
“When I think back, I always revert back to the championship teams I played on more than the individual games I had,” he said. “My first thought is not to go back to the game where I threw for 500 yards, or I threw for four touchdowns. I think back more to the years where we were able to get on a championship run and win a championship. Those kinds of experiences are more than just individual games. What you accomplish as a team at the end of the year is really what everybody is working for.”
Including 2012 and ’17 with the Toronto Argonauts, Ray is the only starting QB in CFL history to win four Grey Cups.
“I definitely feel satisfied and fulfilled with the career that I had,” said Ray, who started playing sports (T-ball, soccer) when he was six or seven years old and, eventually, made his way into football.
“I was always one of the better kids on the team and each level that I got to, I felt like I had a chance to play at the next level,” he said. “I always felt that I was good enough to do it. But, at the same time, I still felt like I wasn’t good enough. I think that gave me a lot of motivation and a lot of drive to keep myself humble and to always work toward something, to work to get better and try to improve. It helped carry me throughout my career.”
Ray said he had to earn his confidence all the time.
“I felt like there’s a lot of self-doubts every game and every year that I had to overcome,” he explained. “That’s why you practise. That’s why you spend a little time after practice trying to build that confidence and to overcome that self-doubt you have.
“There were so many times, even in my last full year of playing in 2017 when we won the Grey Cup, the first half of that season we just couldn’t seem to get ahead of .500 or get back to .500, and we were losing some games. I’m thinking to myself, ‘What’s going on? Am I not good enough to win games?’
“So, yeah, even my last games I played, I still felt that way.”
Ray is only the fourth player in CFL history to throw for more than 60,000 yards in his career (final total: 60,736 yards). He is also Toronto’s all-time passing leader (20,205 yards) and led the league in passing yards four times and in completions five times. He ranks second in career passing completion percentage (68.16) to current Eskimos QB Trevor Harris (70.58), was a three-time CFL all-star (2006 with Edmonton) and the Esks’ most outstanding player five times.
Ray said his personality – “kind of calm and keep to yourself and not say a whole lot” – is similar to his mother, Julie.
“As I played and figured out a little bit more about myself, I felt like I played better when my emotions were even throughout the game. Not that I didn’t feel emotions, but if I didn’t get too high or too low and just stayed focused throughout games, I would play better, so that’s just an approach that came naturally to me. I always tried to keep (my emotions) in check a little bit.”
Ray didn’t want to celebrate too much if he threw a touchdown pass in the first quarter because there was still plenty of game left to play or “get down on myself too much throughout the course of the game because there’s always going to be another play to run and another situation to be in and I just wanted to be even-keeled throughout those situations.
“Now there’s a few times, obviously, throughout my career, when maybe I showed a little bit more emotion at certain points, or I felt it more inside, but I guess I just did a good job of trying to bring myself back to that centre point, I guess.”
Ray was initially disappointed when the Eskimos traded him to the Argos for a package of players that included quarterback Steven Jyles, kicker Grant Shaw and a draft pick after the 2011 season.
“At the time, I wanted to be in Edmonton; I wanted to play my whole career in Edmonton,” Ray said. “We had a pretty decent year (in 2011). We got off to a great start and then kind of fizzled in the middle, but we ended up hosting a playoff game and beat Calgary in the first round and then went to BC and lost to a very good BC team that turned it around – I think they started 1-6, but we’re playing really good.
“I felt like, ‘Man, we were right there knocking on the door.’ A new head coach (Kavis Reed), the general manager (Eric Tillman) is new and new players. We made it to the West final and then it’s, ‘Hey, we’re trading you!’
“I definitely felt shocked and surprised after that season that that was going to happen. But looking back now, it ended up being good. Being with a different team, a different situation, it gave me a new opportunity to start over and be somewhere different.”
After six years in Toronto, 16 in the CFL and 17 in pro football, Ray announced his retirement at a press conference on May 8, 2019. He tore a ligament in his neck in the second game of the 2018 season and didn’t play another game.
How was his first summer without rehabilitating injuries or playing football in 31 years?
“Better than I thought it would be,” he said. “It just feels like the off-season has been a lot longer.
“I would come back home to (Redding), California, every off-season. It just feels like I’m still in the off-season because I’m still doing things like I would normally do. I’m just not training for football. That’s the only difference. I’m not throwing or doing all the football stuff, but I’m still exercising and spending time with family.
“That made the transition feel more normal for me. It would be a different situation if I still felt like I could play, but I really don’t have those feelings, so it’s been easy for me not to feel like I made the wrong decision. I feel like I made the right decision because I just believe that, physically, I can’t do it anymore.”
Ray and his wife, Allyson, and daughters Chloe, 8, and Olivia, 4, returned to Toronto for the Argonauts’ home opener in June. He visited his former teammates at practice and watched the game without stirring up his competitive juices. The Argos honoured him during a pre-game ceremony on the field where he thanked the fans, his teammates and his family for their support over the years.
He went to another CFL game at The Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium in July when he visited some friends in Edmonton and checked out the Eskimos’ coaching environment.
“And I’ve seen a couple of games on TV, the ones they’ll show down here on ESPN,” Ray said. “So I’ve been (at CFL games), I’ve experienced it, and it’s been great so far. I don’t have those feelings of wishing that I was still playing.
“I just feel so lucky to be able to have a nine-year career in Edmonton and play for seven years in Toronto. I think they’re No. 1 (Toronto, 17) and No. 2 (Edmonton, 14) with Grey Cup victories and there’s a lot of history and tradition with each franchise and great players who have played there. Now to have a chance to be honoured by both clubs is pretty cool.”
Is coaching football in Ray’s future?
“I think it could be,” he said. “I’m not 100 per cent (decided). I have a young family – two young girls. I want to be around them as much as I can. I’m just not ready to jump back into that commitment of being a coach. (Coaches) put a ton of time in, and they don’t get to see their family as much during the season.
“Do I bring my kids back and forth (from California if he becomes a coach) or do we move and then you don’t know how long you’re going to be with that team? There’s a lot of uncertainty that comes with coaching, and I’m not sure if I want to put my family through that right now.
“But I do know that I would really enjoy being involved in football and to be part of a team and be on a coaching staff or something like that,” he added. “Who knows? For the time being – this year and maybe next year – I don’t know if it’s going to be something I want to commit to, but maybe down the road I will as my family gets a little older.”